"There are various ways of cooking food for the several species of
mammalia which an all-wise Providence--"
"Do you think you're cooking for wild-cats?" she demanded.
Our smiles faded.
"It's my opinion that you're incompetent," remarked the Reverend Dr.
Jones, slapping at midges with a hand that might have rocked all the
cradles of the nation, but had not rocked any.
"We're not getting our money's worth," said Miss Dingleheimer, "even if
the Government does pay your salaries."
I looked appealingly from one stony face to another. In Miss McFadden's
eye there was the somber glint of battle. She said:
"If you can guide us no better than you cook, God save us all this day
week!" And she hurled the contents of her tin plate into Lake Susan W.
Pillsbury.
Mrs. Doolittle Batt arose:
"Come," she said; "it is time we started. What is the name of the first
lake we may hope to encounter?"
We knew no more than did they, but we said that Lake Gladys Doolittle
Batt was the first, hoping to placate that fearsome woman.
"Come on, then!" she cried, picking up her carved and varnished mountain
staff.
Miss Dingleheimer had brought one, too, from the Catskills.
So Kitten Brown and I loaded our mule, set him in motion, and drove him
forward into the unknown.
Where we were going we had not the slightest idea; the margin of the lake
was easy travelling, so easy that we never noticed that we had already
gone around the lake three times, until Mrs. Batt recognized the fact and
turned on us furiously.
I didn't know how to explain it, except to say feebly that I was doing it
as a sort of preliminary canter to harden and inure the ladies.
"We don't need hardening!" she snarled. "Do you understand that!"
I comprehended that at once. But I forced a sickly smile and skipped
forward in the wake of my mule, with something of the same abandon
which characterizes the flight of an unwelcome dog.
In the terrified ear of Kitten I voiced my doubts concerning the
prospects of a pleasant journey.
We marched in the following order: Arthur, the heavily laden mule,
led; then came Kitten Brown and myself, all hung over with stew-pans,
shotguns, rifles, cartridge-belts, ponchos, and the toilet reticules of
the ladies; then marched the Reverend Dr. Jones, and, in order, filing
behind her, Miss Dingleheimer, Mrs. Batt, Miss McFadden, and Miss
White--the latter in her trained nurse's costume and wearing a red cross
on her sleeve--an idea of Mrs. Batt, who believed in emergency methods.
Mrs. Batt also bore a banner, much interfered with by the foliage,
bearing the inscription:
EQUAL RIGHTS!
EUGENICS OR EXTERMINATION!
After a while she shouted:
"Guide! Here, you may carry this banner for a while! I'm tired."
Kitten and I took turns with it after that. It was hard work,
particularly as one by one in turn they came up and hung their parasols
and shopping reticules all over us. We plodded forward like a pair of
moving department stores, not daring to shift our burdens to Arthur,
because we had already stuffed into the panniers of that simple and
dignified animal all our collecting boxes, cyanide jars, butterfly nets,
note-books, reels of piano wire, thermometers, barometers, hydrometers,
stereometers, aeronoids, adnoids--everything, in fact, that guides are
not supposed to pack into the woods, but which we had smuggled unbeknown
to those misguided ones we guided.
And, to make room for our scientific paraphernalia, we had been obliged
to do a thing so mean, so inexpressibly low, that I blush to relate it.
But facts are facts; we discarded nearly a ton of feminine impedimenta.
There was fancy work of all sorts in the making or in the raw--materials
for knitting, embroidering, tatting, sewing, hemming, stitching,
drawn-work, lace-making, crocheting.
Also we disposed of almost half a ton of toilet necessities--powder,
perfumery, cosmetics, hot-water bags, slippers, negligees, novels,
magazines, bon-bons, chewing-gum, hat-boxes, gloves, stockings,
underwear.
We left enough apparel for each lady to change once. They'd have to do
some scrubbing now. Science can not be halted by hatpins; cosmos can not
be side-tracked by cosmetics.
Toward sunset we came upon a small, crystal clear pond, set between the
bases of several lofty mountains. I was ready to drop with fatigue, but
I nerved myself, drew a deep, exultant breath, and with one of those
fine, sweeping gestures, I cried:
"Lake Mrs. Gladys Doolittle Batt! Eureka! At last! Excelsior!"
There was a profound silence behind me. I turned, striving to mask my
apprehension with a smile. The ladies were regarding the pond in
surprise. I admit that it was a pond, not a lake.
Injecting into my voice the last remnants of glee which I could summon, I
shouted, "Eureka!" and began to caper about as though the size and beauty
of the pond had affected me with irrepressible enthusiasm, hoping by my
emotion to stampede the convention.
The cold voice of Mrs. Doolittle Batt checked my transports:
"Is that puddle named after me?" she demanded.
"M-ma'am?" I stammered.
"If that wretched frog-pond has been christened with my name, somebody is
going to get into trouble," she said ominously.
A profound silence ensued. Arthur patiently switched at flies. As for
me, I looked up at the majestic pines, gazed upon the lofty and eternal
hills, then ventured a sneaking glance all around me. But I could
discover no avenue of escape in case Mrs. Batt should charge me.
"I had been informed," she began dangerously, "that the majestic body of
water, which I understood had been honoured with my name, was twelve
miles long and three miles wide. This appears to be a puddle!"
"B-b-but it's very p-pretty," I protested feebly. "It's quite round and
clear, and it's nearly a quarter of a mile in d-diameter--"
"Mind your business!" retorted Mrs. Doolittle Batt. "I've been swindled!"
Kitten Brown knew more about women than did I. He said in a fairly steady
voice:
"Madame, it is an outrage! The women of this mighty nation should make
the Government answerable for its duplicity! Your lake should have been
at least twenty miles long!"
Everybody turned and looked at Kitten. He was a handsome dog.
"This young man appears to have some trace of common-sense," said Mrs.
Batt. "I shall see to it that the Government is held responsible for
this odious act of insulting duplicity. I--I won't have my name given to
this--this wallow!--" She advanced toward me, her small eyes blazing: I
retreated to leeward of Arthur.
"Guide!" she said in a voice still trembling with passion. "Are you
certain that you have made no mistake? You appear to be unusually
ignorant."
"I am afraid there can be no room for doubt," I said, almost scared out
of my senses.
"And on top of this outrage, am I to eat your cooking?" she demanded
passionately. "Did I come here to look at this frog-pond and choke on
your cooking? _Did_ I?"
"_I_ can cook," said a clear, pleasant voice at my elbow. And Miss White
came forward, cool, clean, fresh as a posy in her uniform and cap. I
immediately got behind her.
"I can cook very nicely," she said smilingly. "It is part of my
profession, you know. So if you two guides will be kind enough to build
the fire and help me--" She let her violet eyes linger on me for an
instant, then on Brown. A moment later he and I were jostling each other
in our eagerness to obey her slightest suggestion. It is that way with
men.
So we built her a fire and unpacked our provisions, and we waited very
politely on the ladies when dinner was ready.
It was a fine dinner--coffee, bacon, flap-jacks, soup, ash-bread, stewed
chicken.
The heavy artillery, made ravenous by their journey, required vast
quantities of ammunition. They banqueted largely. I gazed in amazement at
Mrs. Doolittle Batt as she swallowed one flap-jack after another, while
her eyes bulged larger and larger.
Nor was the capacity of Miss Dingleheimer and the Reverend Dr. Jones to
be mocked at by pachyderms.
Brown and I left them eating while we erected the row of little tents.
Every lady had demanded a separate tent.
So we cut saplings, set up the silk, drove pegs, and brought armfuls of
balsam boughs.
I was afraid they'd demand their knitting and other utensils, but they
had eaten to repletion, and were sleepy; and as each toilet case or
reticule contained also a nightgown, they drew the flaps of their several
tents without insisting that we unpack Arthur's panniers.
They all had disappeared within their tents except Miss White, who
insisted on cooking something for us, although we protested that the
scraps of the banquet were all right for mere guides.
She stood beside us for a few minutes, watching us busy with our
delicious dinner.
"You poor fellows," she said gently. "You are nearly starved."
It is agreeable to be sympathized with by a tall, fair, fresh young girl.
We looked up, simpering gratefully.
"This is really a most lovely little lake," she said, gazing out across
the still, crystalline water which was all rose and gold in the sunset,
save where the sombre shapes of the towering mountains were mirrored in
glassy depths.
"It's odd," I said, "that no trout are jumping. There ought to be lots of
them there, and this is their jumping hour."
We all looked at the quiet, oval bit of water. Not a circle, not the
slightest ripple disturbed it.
"It must be deep," remarked Brown.
We gazed up at the three lofty peaks, the bases of which were the shores
of this tiny gem among lakes. Deep, deep, plunging down into dusky
profundity, the rocks fell away sheer into limpid depths.
"That little lake may be a thousand feet deep," I said. "In 1903
Professor Farrago, of Bronx Park, measured a lake in the Thunder
Mountains, which was two thousand seven hundred and sixty-nine feet
deep."
Miss White looked at me curiously.
Into a patch of late sunshine flitted a small butterfly--one of the
_Grapta_ species. It settled on a chip of wood, uncoiled its delicate
proboscis, and spread its fulvous and deeply indented wings.
"_Grapta California_," remarked Brown to me.
"_Vanessa asteriska_" I corrected him. "Note the anal angle of the
secondaries and the argentiferous discal area bordering the subcostal
nervule."
"The characteristic stripes on the primaries are wanting," he demurred.
"It is double brooded. The summer form lacks the three darker bands."
A few moments' silence was broken by the voice of Miss White.
"I had no idea," she remarked, "that Alaskan guides were so familiar with
entomological terms and nomenclature."
We both turned very red.
Brown mumbled something about having picked up a smattering. I added that
Brown had taught me.
Perhaps she believed us; her blue eyes rested on us curiously, musingly.
Also, at moments, I fancied there was the faintest glint of amusement in
them.
She said:
"Two scientific gentlemen from New York requested permission to join this
expedition, but Mrs. Batt refused them." She gazed thoughtfully upon
the waters of Lake Gladys Doolittle Batt. "I wonder," she murmured, "what
became of those two gentlemen."
It was evident that we had betrayed ourselves to this young girl.
She glanced at us again, and perhaps she noticed in our fascinated gaze
an expression akin to terror, for suddenly she laughed--such a clear,
sweet, silvery little laugh!
"For my part," she said, "I wish they had come with us. I like--men."
With that she bade us goodnight very politely and went off to her tent,
leaving us with our hats pressed against our stomachs, attempting by the
profundity of our bows to indicate the depth of our gratitude.
"_There's_ a girl!" exclaimed Brown, as soon as she had disappeared
behind her tent flaps. "She'll never let on to Medusa, Xantippe,
Cassandra and Company. I _like_ that girl, Smith."
"You're not the only one imbued by such sentiments," said I.
He smiled a fatuous and reminiscent smile. He certainly was good-looking.
Presently he said:
"She has the most delightful way of gazing at a man--"
"I've noticed," I said pleasantly.
"Oh. Did she happen to glance at _you_ that way?" he inquired. I wanted
to beat him.
All I said was:
"She's certainly some kitten." Which bottled that young man for a while.
We lay on the bank of the tiny lake, our backs against a huge pine-tree,
watching the last traces of colour fading from peak and tree-top.
"Isn't it queer," I said, "that not a trout has splashed? It can't be
that there are no fish in the lake."
"There _are_ such lakes."
"Yes, very deep ones. I wonder how deep this is."
"We'll be out at sunrise with our reel of piano wire and take soundings,"
he said. "The heavy artillery won't wake until they're ready to be loaded
with flap-jacks."